The
supreme victory for the rapist is proof that his victim "enjoyed"
it. Though he may force his way into her property, demolish her home,
murder her loved ones, pillage her belongings, though he may terrify
and humiliate her, beat and batter her, break her bones and tear her
flesh, spill her blood, wound her organs and lay waste to her very soul,
if, in the midst of the rape, between tears and shrieks
of agony, if his victim should, for a moment, for some reason, any reason,
if she should smile, or, better yet, orgasm, the rapist is redeemed;
he is even (in his mind) heroic.

This
is why, when the Anglo-American rape of Iraq began, we so desperately
searched the Iraqi faces on our televisions for a smile. And that is
why, when after three weeks of horrendous carnage, we finally got more
than three Iraqis in one place to smile at our handsome invading army
and help them to topple a statue of our mutual accursed enemy, we declared
the war to be, virtually, over.

Of
course, it's not really over. The bombing and shooting continue, and
then there's the looting. But those smiles make everything all right.
All the murder and mayhem continue. But hey--a dazed teenager grins
at an expensive American camera, and hoots "Thank you Boosh!"
and we're ready to forget children with their arms blown off and too
many corpses on the highway to count, let alone identify. We feel good
about our war now, at least some of us do. As the rapist would say,
"I gave her what she really wanted." She needed to be raped.
She wanted to be violated.

As
psych-buffs know, sometimes a rape victim does smile, and even orgasm,
in the midst of a horrible, excruciating assault. Perhaps it is a life-saving
attempt at ingratiation or the body's way of defending against the onslaught,
a variation on the Stockholm Syndrome, but it is a natural, albeit humiliating
response. Of course, the rapist cares little about the "psychology"
of his victim. That smile is his triumph, his war medal of honor.

This
is why we feel so good, and so guilty for feeling good (and in this
case, the guilt is good), about seeing those smiling Iraqis and watching
that big ugly statue come down over and over again (even if it was a
staged media set-up with fewer than 100 people, including press, marines
and folks from Ahmed Chalabi's entourage, which long-shots and comparison
photos of the event reveal).

We're
looting you of your oil, so you might as well loot yourselves.
Have at it!

The
toppling of the statue has other patriotic erotic connotations. It is
the cutting down of our enemy. The orgasmic, victorious crescendo of
the Cockfight
at the Baghdad Corral. The castration of Saddam. The decapitation
of Saddam. Well, not exactly Saddam the man (though according to the
Bushies, he's gone from being the evilest human since Hitler to being
not worth bothering to find). Not the actual Saddam. Just a statue (though
a larger than life statue that plays really well on TV!). Kind of like
a dildo versus the actual cock. A surrogate Saddam. Saddam in effigy.
The toppling of the evil Saddam statue is an image of glorious, righteous
castration for the history books and a wet dream for the apocalypse-seekers.
For the "patriotic" American, it avenges the awful images
of our Twin Towers of corporate strength and potency--Dick
One and Dick Two--going down in flames, themselves castrated by
the fiery sword of the terrorist. Even though it was a different terrorist.

But
oh, how can we be so picky about whether or not Saddam or any Iraqis
actually had anything to do with 9/11--when we're experiencing such
deep, heroic, patriotic, erotic feelings? Not only does our victim enjoy
being raped, she's glad we murdered her horrible old husband! Who cares
about proof of responsibility for 9/11, or the fact that the U.S. politically
and economically supported Saddam during the period of his worst offences?
Who cares about those tedious old Weapons of Mass Destruction when our
hearts are swelling with pride over our role as rapist-rescuers?

And
now the looting. As one Iraqi shopkeeper who was having his store cleaned
out by looters, as the American troops stood by doing nothing, remarked,
"before there was one Saddam Hussein. Now there are thousands of
Saddam Husseins." And why not? Seeing the looters smile and flash
victory signs at American soldiers as the Americans smile and flash
back, the message is clear: We're looting you of your oil, so you might
as well loot yourselves. Have at it! And keep smiling. Just don't come
near us with those grenades." The result: Everything is being looted.
Not just Saddam's palaces. Everything. At the moment, there is not a
functioning hospital in Baghdad. The Iraqi Antiquities Museum has been
cleaned out of 5000-year-old priceless antiquities, most stolen, some
smashed to pieces in the fury of "liberation.". This is not
just Iraq's heritage that the illegal Anglo-American rape of Iraq has
destroyed; this is the heritage of the Western world, the archeological
legacy of the Cradle of Civilization, the land of Abraham and Sarah,
the ancient Sumerians and the legendary Garden of Eden. Marines guard
the oil fields and even, brazenly, the Oil Ministry, leaving the hospitals,
museums and the shops of hard-working Iraqis to the looters.

And
still the cozily embedded mainstream media keep playing the image of
the toppling statue and the smiling Iraqis. CNN might as well be anchored
by Ari Fleischer. The jacked-up newscasters revel in the soft-core porn
of war, "tastefully" showing very little of the rampant hardcore
death and dismemberment, just lots of handsome, stalwart troops and
beguiling, brown-faced grins that communicate: Freedom! Liberation!
Smiles! They love us! We may have brutally, systematically raped their
country (and the rape continues), but they want it! They really want
us to bomb the shit out of them. They like thatů

Who
are all these looters anyway? Rummy says they're "ordinary Iraqis"
though a bit "untidy." I don't know about that. I remember
a little Iraqi factoid from months back when the Statue Toppling was
just a gleam in Boy King Bush's eye: Saddam let all the prisoners out
of his prisons. Tens of thousands of them. He let the criminal element
back on the street, and now here they are, ruling Iraq, the interim
government of crime preceding occupation. Is this the Baathists' "unconventional
weapon" that that crazy old Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf kept threatening
to unleash?

Chimpanzees
spread their lips into what looks like a smile when they're scared.
It is the smile of submission and ingratiation, not pleasure, and it
often masks deceitful scheming against the powerful alpha male recipient
of the smile. Considering what we have put them through, who knows what
lurks behind that beautiful Iraqi smile?

Dr.Susan
Block's "soul-searching... essays (on the War)... are among the most
readable to come out of Los Angeles (that) smartly combine outrage and
eccentric observations with levelheaded warnings about the loss of civil
liberties."
Steve Mikulan
The LA Weekly

Most
of Dr. Block's essays are reprinted in Counterpunch,
"America's Best Political Newsletter," edited by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair

"So
thrilled to have you on our site, lending distinction and intelligence."
Alex Cockburn
Counterpunch

"Alex
and I love your stuff... So do most of our readers. The ones who don't?...well,
fuck em. " Jeff St. Clair
Counterpunch